


a poor man's memory

by pixelpop



Category: Greek Tragedy, Greek and Roman Mythology, Oedipus Cycle - Sophocles
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Analysis, F/M, Great Depression, Implied/Referenced Incest, i just love the relationship between jocasta/creon/oedipus, we did it set in the 30s when we did oedipus rex okay thats why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2502866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixelpop/pseuds/pixelpop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Creon sees ghosts. One of them is his sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a poor man's memory

There are still bloodstains in the carpet.

They are morbid and appalling, but Creon has stopped worrying about appearances, for there is no one in Thebes brave enough to come close to the house once owned by Oedipus. Time has seemingly ceased since then— clothes and belongings in various stages of disarray around the house, dust thick on the bookshelves and cupboards.

(The noose, still tied from the sheets of their marriage bed, hanging limp from the wooden beam in their ceiling. A dust storm comes, and it sways with the wind that rattles the frame of the house.)

He decides to drink the rest of the whiskey. The bottles in the liquor cabinet are clean of any fingerprints, and they have been for a while. His sister’s voice echoes in his head.

_“Oedipus doesn’t drink much these days. He’s the angry sort of drunk, and I’m afraid I don’t want the children around that.”_

She always tried hiding those bruises in the morning, covering herself up with shawls and cardigans even when the summer sun was at its worst. And Oedipus— perched on the edge of the porch with his handkerchief in hand, lazy smile twisting his features into something grotesque. He was proud of his work.

Creon always knew he’d kill her one day.

The children— Antigone and Ismene —reside in his home now, tucked away in beds with tear tracks staining their cheeks. He cannot look at them, for all he sees is his sister.

Antigone has her father’s eyes though; cold and blue, an unforgiving note in their gaze.

Creon’s sister— oh his dear, beloved sister.

She’s here now, standing in the kitchen with a cigarette to her lips, wisps of smoke filtering through the afternoon light of their picture window over the dusty countertops.

“How long will you berate yourself, Creon?”

She is wearing the floral dress he’d given her for a birthday many years ago. Mother’s pearls hang loose around her neck, and Creon notices the unsightly ring of bruising at her throat. She continues smoking.

“Why are you only visiting me now?”

“Because you’re ready,” she turns to him, eyes narrowed, and huffs out a humorless laugh. “You’re a pitiful thing, are you not?”

“You’re dead,” he says dumbly. They stare at each other for a while longer before she finally decides to take a seat across from him at the kitchen table. She traces the bumps and bruises in the finish with her fingertips.

“What have you done with my children, brother?” she asks. Their eyes don’t meet, but he can feel her pensiveness radiating through the slope of her shoulders. “Where have they gone?”

“They are in my home now, with your attendant. They are safe.”

She shakes her head, taking another puff from her cigarette. “Send them to Polynices and Eteocles. I’d like to think that their brothers would enjoy their company now.”

“I won’t let them inside this city,” Creon bites out. The glass tumbler in his hand shakes when he lifts it to his lips. The sound of the ice rattling around in its glass cage is horribly loud between them.

“Let them come,” she says, quieter this time. “But do not let a soul speak to them, not one person breathe a word of what has transpired here. They must never know their origin.”

“But surely Antigone and—.”

“They will not,” Creon finally sees her eyes. Beautiful, like chips of green glass shining in the sunlight. They are melancholy. “Trust me on this, dear brother.”

They are silent again as Creon pours another two fingers of whiskey into his glass. He is messy and shaken, and some of it spills into the beard growing at his jaw when he attempts to sip.

She chuckles under her breath. “Maybe it is time to shave, get rid of the Creon of Thebes and be a Creon of somewhere else.”

“I am Creon of Thebes and will remain so till the end of time,” he breathes. “The infamy that lasts here will not wither and die, sister. Our names will always be known, even after ten generations live and die on these lands.”

There is a pause. She scoffs.

“You think of killing yourself,” she rises from her seat, skirt billowing out from behind her as she goes into the sitting room. Creon follows hastily. “Fine. If you are brave enough to do so, use that noose still hanging in my bedroom. I know you dream of it these days, your eyes are dark with a need for it.”

She seats herself in her armchair, embroidery stained red in patches and her eyes wander over them.

“And for my…husband,” the last word is tacked on, hesitant and loose as if the term has no meaning. “Do you think he is alive now? How fearful it must be, wandering in the dust with no eyes to guide him, no mind either…”

“You speak as if he is not an abomination,” Creon sits across from her. His glass clatters when he sets it on the end table.

The cigarette between her fingers is burned down almost completely, but she still lets its smolder in her hand as she wanders off in thought. The bruises around her neck are more prominent in this lighting, and a sudden, very overwhelming sensation of choking grabs ahold of Creon.

“I loved him,” the words don’t seem to reach her eyes though. “I did, at one point sincerely love that man. I don’t know when our love got lost though, whether it was Ismene or Eteocles…”

“He hurt you, sister,” he can feel the rage shaking in his lungs, burning like liquid fire as tears gather in the back of his throat. “He had no regard for you, no thought or sense in his actions, he _killed_ you.”

“ _He_ did not kill me, Creon,” she snaps. “I did. I took my own life, it was my choice.”

“ _Lies!”_ Creon stands, grabbing the glass from the table and tossing it at the far wall. It shatters, sending a multitude of broken rainbows reflecting onto the floor. “You’re dead because of him. He’s a _murderer!_ ”

“I loved him,” her voice is very quiet, pulling Creon down from his rage, and he stares at the shattered remnants of his glass. “I think you are merely jealous, brother, of the love you could never give me.”

Their eyes meet.

Creon breaks.

They are not the gentle kind of tears, but the sadistic, wailing sort that rips your soul from your body and then shoves it back in again.

She watches him crumple to the floor, curling in on himself as his frame is wracked with the hiccupping sobs that tear through his chest. He heaves, and there’s a moment of prolonged silence in which she slides to the floor with him, and her delicate hands gather him into her arms.

“Oh, Creon,” she murmurs into his hair. “You poor, pitiful man.”

She cradles him, rocking back and forth, and Creon thinks she must remember holding her children this way. Those children sit in his house now, weeping for their parents, grieving their dead mother.

“You always bought me the grandest things— perfumes, jewelry, dresses. Even when our money started to run dry you always tried to win me over, take me from Laius,” she pauses, and her voice is suddenly hushed and swollen. “I never loved Laius, brother. I loved Oedipus, but know that I never loved Laius.”

When the tears finally cease Creon pulls himself from his sister’s chest, eyes red and swollen, hands shaking at her hips.

“Do not leave me, sister—.”

“Don’t call me that,” she blinks as if woken suddenly from a dream. “I am your sister, yes, but call me by my name Creon.”

He pauses, tongue feeling like a lead weight in his mouth, and then croaks it out, three syllables he hasn’t spoken in nearly a week.

“ _Jocasta.”_

She’s gone.

He cries for her, voice ringing out in the empty house as he searches every corner for even a lick of her shadow. Her jewelry sits in the mahogany box upon her vanity, dust collecting on the lid. There are bloodstains on the sheets, and the noose hangs over the foot of the bed, dangling in the rafters like some sort of taunt.

He can hear it again— the screaming, the urgency, glass crashing on wood flooring and Oedipus’ grief stricken voice. Creon collapses to the floor, hands clamped around his ears to stave off the tremendous noise.

He remembers his sister’s tears of joy after her second wedding night, smiling as bright as the dusty sun hanging in the sky, entirely too exuberant about the prospects of her marriage with Oedipus. Creon had seen him at a distance, hovering over his newlywed wife like he couldn’t get enough of her. He knew from the beginning that the devotion in him was not saintly, could never be with the hungry way he guarded her, possessive of a favorite toy he wasn’t willing to give up.

Creon should’ve known. He was exactly like Laius.

“Give me my sister,” he says. The air does not respond. “Cut me down from this earth, God. Expel me. Just put my beloved sister back on this earth.”

Oedipus and Creon rarely spoke, only ever in truce around the woman of the house. She always demanded they play nice, but Creon never much liked it. Oedipus took it in stride, using it as a device of spite, laying claim on his wife whenever Creon seemed to be near.

“You think I love my sister like you do, hm?” Creon had said. They were alone in the kitchen— a year before any children in the house —and his sister was off gossiping with her attendant. The moon hung in the sky like a great, lustrous orb, and Oedipus’ teeth glimmered against its shine when he smiled.

“I think you are jealous of our bond. Were you not close growing up?”

“We were,” Creon sighed. “Things change though as you grow older.”

Oedipus laughed. “I take it you did not like Laius.”

Creon froze, hands twitching over his cigarette poised against the edge of the ashtray. “And what makes you think that?”

“You never speak of him. She does a great lot of the time— I think she never mourned properly is the thing, but you always seem to avoid the topic,” Oedipus loosened the tie at his throat, slouching back in his seat. “You are very protective of her.”

“She is my sister, what more do you want?”

Oedipus scoffed and let his eyes roll back, a mockery in its finest form. “You are blind to your own affections.”

Oh, the insensible irony.

The house stays disturbingly quiet, save for the groaning of the framework as the wind kicks up, howling loud enough to cover up Creon’s sobbing from the floorboards. He remains like this for what seems like hours, until finally night falls and there is a brief knock at the door.

Everything remains as it was that day. Nothing is cleaned; chairs knocked over, bloodstains in the carpet, the echo of grief stricken cries painted into the wallpaper. Whoever is brave enough to venture to this house must have a simpler fate than them.

The knock comes again, more insistent this time, and Creon wipes at his eyes before staggering to the door.

Lying prostrate in front of the threshold looking as ghastly as ever, is Oedipus. The bandages on his eyes are thick and smell of infection, bloody tears slipping out from underneath the gauze and onto the boards of the porch. He shakes and starts to wail, hands scrabbling around for something to touch, and Creon stumbles back. Oedipus’ suit is torn and ragged, and there are burns along his revealed skin where the dust and sand must have torn at him.

“Where have I stumbled upon?” Oedipus croaks. His voice is dry and jagged, and Creon wonders how he is still living. “Who is this?”

Creon says nothing, but reaches a hand down to touch the top of Oedipus’ head. The man cries out in relief, and Creon reluctantly helps him to his feet and into the house where he is seated in the kitchen. He hopes that Oedipus might not recognize any familiar scents or feelings, might touch the wrong thing and know that he must be in his own house again.

Creon vowed to banish him. Oedipus begged him to.

It seems the man has had a change of heart.

“Who are you? Why are you not speaking to me? I am blind if you cannot tell, there is no way for me to know what you might need to say…” Oedipus swallows around a thick tongue. “May I have some water?”

Even if he is on the brink of death, this man still has the heart to be a gentleman somehow. Creon almost pities him, and hands him his glass of water. It isn’t the cleanest, but their house was the only one in Thebes with indoor plumbing.

Oedipus drinks it down so quickly Creon fears he might drown in it. The blind man’s hands shake as he sets the glass down on the table, and then he speaks again.

“I am sorry for the trouble I may have caused you. If you do not wish to speak with me, and send me back out into the dust, then I shall go. I don’t want to be any burden—.”

“Oedipus,” Creon says quietly. “How are you still alive?”

“Creon? _Creon? Is it you? Can it really be you?”_ Oedipus tries to stand from the table, but Creon stops him, sits him back down and takes the seat beside him.

“Yes, you fool, it is me,” he pauses, watching the blind man try to adjust himself, follow the trail of Creon’s voice. “How have you not died in that dust? You should have died of dehydration.”

“Perhaps I have, and this is all a dream,” Oedipus laughs bitterly under his breath. “My punishment for being an ignorant, incestuous fool is to roam the blackness for all eternity, never dying, never waking. Always walking.”

“You are surely dead, and I am still drunk from this afternoon. I took the last of your whiskey. It was quite good.”

Oedipus tries to smile. It’s pitiful. “She never let me drink, always said I was an angry fool, and ran about destroying things and shouting. I never remembered much afterward…”

“She knew you best, I suppose.”

Creon watches the way that Oedipus moves now: very slowly and carefully, the blindness still so new to him. He reaches out a hand across the length of the table from where he sits at the corner— palm up —and Creon takes this as some sort of offering. He grasps the chapped, wind burned hand. Oedipus holds on so tightly Creon fears he might break him.

“My wife— your sister. She…she loved you an awful lot more than me, I think,” Oedipus swallows. His blindness bleeds truth now, and he talks much slower, more careful with how he tiptoes around words. “She loved me more than Laius, but never more than you. Near the end I think she would’ve rather been banished for being in love with you rather than me. I suppose it would’ve been easier to rationalize, yes?”

“God hates us,” Creon chokes out. Oedipus holds on tighter.

“God will hate us, but he will never hate _her,”_ his exhale is shaky. “I still love her, Creon. I can still see her face as clear as day. She is my North Star in this hellish darkness, and I will follow her to the end of time. I do not care if she is my mother, because I will love her all the same.”

The next bout of silence is strained. Oedipus chokes as if he is about to cry.

“I killed her soul, Creon. I destroyed her when we were married,” he gasps, and more bloody tears escape from underneath his bandages. “I do not care if you hate me, because you have every reason to.”

Creon withdraws his hand from Oedipus’ and slowly rises from his seat. The moon hangs high in the sky, and in the distance he sees the lights of Thebes. There, in his home lie the two children that will forever be cursed. There, the rest of the city shall mock and hate him. So far away it all seems. So insignificant.

“Should I clean your wounds?”

Oedipus shakes his head. “I will suffer what has been bestowed upon me, it is the least I can do. Lead me away, would you? I do not want to be a burden once more.”

“You do not want to see your children? You want nothing from your house?”

“I will only bring grief,” Oedipus feigns a smile and staggers to his feet. He pauses though after taking a few steps away from the table. “Her handkerchief— do you still have it?”

“I believe I do.”

“Would you mind giving it to me?”

Creon doesn’t answer, just wordlessly retrieves it from the bedroom. But on his way back, he discovers the front door hanging open, chair at the kitchen table pulled away, but no sign of Oedipus. The screen door rattles in the wind.

He lifts the lace handkerchief to his nose, inhaling his sister’s scent. He thinks of how he should head home to see to the children, take them off the attendant’s hands for a bit. He’ll wash the dirt from himself and try to pray before bed. Sleep will claw at him. Life will move on.

Creon sinks to the floor, and in the distance he imagines he’ll hear his sister’s footsteps on the front porch, shouts of delight as she arrives home because she forgot her handkerchief and Creon waited up for her.

He hears nothing.

There is only silence in purgatory.


End file.
